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THE BOY EVERYONE WANTED

In those days most people lived on farms and drew their livelihood from the land.   It was considered more important than anything else to own much land.   But almost as important was inheritance, because the wealth of land could only be guaranteed by keeping it together in the ownership of the family.   If there were only daughters, then they must make marriages that merged or protected wealth by marrying allies. So when the boy was born, he was considered a major event, a guarantor of the future.  Neither nation nor god was as precious as a son.  These people were fortunate, because this boy was well-endowed.  He nearly glittered when he walked and his laugh was like a bird singing. From his father he inherited vitality, an excellent mind, and potency.  From his mother he accepted the warmest of protection and guidance.  She loved him above everything but his father -- she was completely, absolutely, committed to his father because she was constitutionally and -- truth be to

CINEMATHEQUE FILM/ LE-TOO

CINEMATHEQUE FILM/ LE-TOO PARIS HOTEL DU NORD THE LOFT NIGHT EXPLOITS POETRY READING TRIS OGLED STREET EVENTS BOLIVIA 3 SUICIDALS FACEBOOK DARK POETS WORK LOST RACHEL FOUND AMSTERDAM CATACOMBS CUNT  (VID) ITALY PALERMO TO JAPAN UMBRIA - MONASTERY EARTHQUAKE OF 2009 NAVAJO DEATH AND BROKEN SHOULDERS RED CHAIRS PAINTED         ISABELLA AND JACK EAVAN’S HOBBIT HOUSE: CAP BRETON    60TH BIRTHDAY PASCAL SUICIDE APPALACHIA DIASPORA

SEX WITHOUT STIGMA

This post was prompted by this trailer for a Broadway stage "opera".  Maybe you'll want to watch it first.  Maybe you were getting impatient for something that justified that red "scare warning" before the blog opens.  The strategy here is to take on something so stigmatized that it was entirely secret, then blown open by a new wave of culture.  What was hidden, intimate, accessed by only a few people who considered it evidence of a precious insight into life, is now a shallow, loud, braggadacio that must be painful to the very people who made it possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WBeEGVzyPU What it prompted is reflection on what would happen if the stigma on sex were gone, entirely gone, from every type of sex, true Bonobo abandon of standards or occasions or significance.  Many people give sex their highest priority in  life, esp. writers for crime TV and streaming shows.  it's the rationale for a million bloody stories.  I pulled away fro

FINBAR AND ROSCOE

Finbar was a ginger man with the near-leprechaun features of an Irishman and everyone thought he might be a brawler, but he wasn't.  All his lovers were dark men, ever since he was a boy -- black, Mexican, indigenous.  Roscoe was a man so black he was nearly blue but with the fine sharp features of an American indigenous.  He wasn't a brawler either.  The men had met in college. It wasn't a special or fine place, just one generous about admission policies and too far out in the unknown to not hear about gay men in pairs.  They saw gay men only in the surging celebrations of San Francisco, or in movies with comedians flirting feather boas and saying silly things.  Two men loving each other was not seen for lack of a pattern. But they didn't stick there in that place of lawn and monuments and libraries.  The institution was over.  The keeping of intelligence had ended, because now intelligence was different, about sensing and accepting change.  Finbar had studied

SMALL BOY/BIG BOY

I have this running sequence going about two women therapists discussing their cases, what they should do, and what the client dilemmas do to them.  It's more entertaining that just describing theories.  Recently I invented a conversation about a movie they had seen that involved a small boy being molested by a bigger boy he idolized.  There was a four year gap.  These women are clinicians and so they were concerned about diagnosis as well as the effects of the situation on the boy.   My background is a little bit clinical/philosophical/moral, but my earliest context was theatre.  This saved me from the incessant narcissism of self-examination because the point was inhabiting someone else, becoming them.  Becoming a kindergarten-aged boy via imagination is a bit of a challenge, but an interesting one.  Let's look at the options. The molester is admired unconditionally and is very intense and persuasive about what he does to "me" which is both wonderful and a

KITTEN IN THE NIGHT

Terrible shrieks.  Close by.  Thrashing on the bed.  All four cats alert.  More squirming and cat discussion.  Blood and mucus.  Tuxie and her mother, Bunny, are most involved.  Lickinglickinglickinglicking. One lump.  Totally indiscriminate.  Gray. Squirmy.  Chirping. Slowly I wake up and figure out it's Tuxie having a kitten.  She's been looking for a proper birthing place and being pesky about needing to be petted.   We all work on this lump.  The comforter is doomed.  The two big cats are lickinglickinglicking and the two from the last batch of Tuxie's kittens are watching.  Thimble, the male, is interested but only watching.  Thread, the female, is present but looking away. The lump squirms around until it has found a fold in the comforter and goes into it, hidden.  The two big cats are baffled until I pull away the fold.  TaDah!  A newborn kitten. I'm reeling with sleeplessness.  Finally I doze off with the light on.  Then I half-hear the soun

NOTES ON GENIUS FROM BITCH MEDIA

These notes, edited to capture certain points, were taken from an uppity article in "bitchmedia" called "The Myth of the Male Genius " by Aditi Natasha Kini. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/myth-male-genius?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bioneers Genius is power. It is unquantifiable, uncontainable, and like beauty, exists in the eyes of the beholder. Genius enhances access—sexual, social, economic, political. It is a collective agreement—or, in many cases, a collective lie—that grants boundless latitude to those we anoint with the title. But genius is also an indelibly gendered currency used by men—almost always men—of means and success to purchase license. The lie of genius is inextricable from the lie of meritocracy : With the rise of auteur theory in the mid–20th century, film joined the ranks of other fine arts, their marketable auteur status as a “ business model of reflexive adoration ,” auteur worship b